An enterprise may have a legal or other obligation and/or an internal policy that requires selected content to be retained in a particular manner and/or for a prescribed period. In some cases, it may be necessary to be able to provide proof that content data, such as files, email messages, or other content, is being and/or has been retained as required. Often an enterprise will have a policy that at least certain data not be retained beyond an associated and/or prescribed retention period, to avoid the cost of storing and managing the data and the potential cost of locating and producing the data in the context of litigation, for example.
In some managed content systems, some stored content, e.g., certain files, mail messages, or other content items, may be associated with two or more stored objects. For example, in some systems to avoid duplication the content of a file is stored only once, even if the file later is sent as an attachment to an email message or incorporated into another document/object. In some such cases, the content is stored only once and is linked to two or more documents/objects. In such cases, there is a need for a way to ensure that content is not deleted until the last retention period applicable to the content has expired.